Heights and Falls
by lionesseyes13
Summary: Wyldon's perspective on the scene in First Test on the castle ramparts where Kel reveals her fear of heights.


Author's Note: This story was written for the July Challenge over at the Tamora Pierce Writing Experiment forum, which everyone should feel free to check out after reading (and hopefully reviewing) this fic.

This is my attempt at writing Wyldon's perspective on the scene in _First Test _on the rampart where Kel's fear of heights paralyzes her in front of everybody.

Disclaimer: For this fic, I own absolutely nothing except the thoughts going on in Wyldon's head that I invented. Everything else is Tammy's property. Isn't that pathetic? Yes, it is, so don't you dare sue a poor college student such as myself.

Heights and Falls

Lord Wyldon of Cavall was aware that he wasn't being fair to the Girl. That knowledge seared him and made him furious with himself. After all, he had his flaws, but he wasn't an unjust person, or, at least, he hadn't been before His Majesty had forced cognitive dissonance in the form of a ten-year-old girl probationary page upon him. With the probationer, he couldn't help but be unfair, and the realization that he was treating her unjustly only increased his wrath with her, causing him to act even more unfairly toward her. Here he, a man who prized self-control, was trapped in a vicious cycle of abuse that he wasn't even certain he wanted to escape.

What he was sure of, however, was that it was unjust of him to ask the Girl what angle from which she would assault the rampart they were all standing upon when two of her yearmates had already provided the obvious incorrect answers and even a third-year would have been lucky to stumble across the right response. If he had been interested in fairness, he would have posed the question to an older pupil. However, he wasn't interested in justice where the probationer was concerned. No, he was interested in proving to the whole country—including her—that girls weren't supposed to be knights any more than sheep were meant to fight the wolves that preyed on them.

Perhaps the Girl recognized that he had asked her a question that she had essentially the same odds of answering correctly as she did of transforming into a centaur, for she stared at him, her face, which just a second ago had been flushed from their run, paled.

Impatient at her gawking at him, he gestured for her to approach one of the square notches in the wall to survey the ground before she replied as he had instructed her to do earlier. "Before we grow old, probationer," he snapped.

Wyldon prided himself on his motivational skills, and he knew that most of those under his command would have slit their own necks if he ordered them to do so in that particular voice. The Girl proved not to be the exception to this rule as she had been to so many others, because she took two tentative paces forward. Watching how her legs trembled when she walked, he assumed that she was exhausted from the brutal run the pages had just undergone, and felt vindicated. He was right, after all—females weren't as strong as men, and they shouldn't be training as warriors. That was why the probationer ran like a lamb.

After taking the two halting steps forward, the Girl had frozen up again, and he scowled. He hated stalling almost as much as he hated every change that had rocked the realm ever since King Jonathan and Queen Thayet had taken the throne.

"I hope you are quicker to advise your lord in a combat situation," he told her sharply, although she would never be in a combat situation, because he would ensure that.

His sharp tone prodded her forward, and, finally, she reached the wall. When she looked out of the hole, her gaze fixated on Corus, and Wyldon snorted inwardly. Mithros, the Girl really was a moron if she hadn't figured out that anyone attacking the Royal Palace would have already torched the city. He waited a minute for her to have this epiphany and rivet her eyes elsewhere. When she didn't, he spoke again.

"Our attackers have already overrun the city and put it to the torch, girl," he pointed out in the excessively patient manner of a person explaining to a headstrong toddler that placing a blazing candle in one's mouth wasn't a clever idea. "How must they come at us?"

Here, the probationer finally had the sense to gaze down rather than across at the city. The instant she did so, her fingers clenched the wall tightly, as though she feared toppling over it and falling down to the ground so far below. She did not appear to be absorbing the layout of the land, but nor could she pull her eyes away from it. She just stood there, carved from marble, staring down at the ground, and not even breathing.

With a jolt, Wyldon comprehended that the Girl had been terrified when he called on her because she didn't want to be compelled to survey the ground from the rampart, and her legs had been shaking as she approached the wall because she was scared of heights. Somehow, the idea that the probationer might be petrified of heights had never occurred to him.

After all, fears weren't something that he associated with the Girl, who hadn't been afraid to rattle the whole country by entering page training, and who had yet to be truly intimidated by an assignment. In fact, with her cool head, her determination, and her courage, the probationer had many of the qualities he admired in people. If only she had been born a boy, then he would have no problem treating her fairly or believing that she could make a good knight one day. However, she was a girl, and so she didn't belong in battle; nothing could ever alter that. If only she would accept that and devote her cool head and determination to learning how to manage a fief for a future husband, then he would be free to respect her for not being flighty and emotional.

As he studied the Girl's frozen, unbreathing form, Wyldon was suddenly reminded of a morning in Cavall when he was nine, and his younger sister, Elasabenne, had just turned five. Abruptly, he recalled how he had taken his little sister up to the top of Cavall's ramparts to look at the shapes the fluffy white clouds made in the cobalt summer sky. Without warning, he thought of how Elasabenne's whole body had turned to ice when she realized how high up they were, and how her hand, sticky from the turnover she had stolen from the kitchens, had clutched onto his as though he were the only thing preventing her from plummeting down to the earth so far below them.

Remembering how he had managed to convince Elasabenne to turn away from the sight of the terrifying drop from Cavall's ramparts, Wyldon thrust his face in front of the Girl's. Then, because the probationer was not Elasabenne, he ordered sternly, "Look at me, girl. Nowhere else. Look at my face. Whose face do you see?"

The Girl blinked as her eyes took in the fact that the view beneath her was gone and replaced by a face. Then, she croaked, "Lord Wyldon."

"Exactly," he said, grabbing her arms. "Look at my face and turn with me."

Far more roughly than his younger self had done with his sister, Wyldon tugged on the probationer's arms, so that she was forced to spin around with him unless she wanted to be wrapped around her own spine.

"Now we're on a flat place," he announced once he had gotten the Girl to twist around completely. "There's stone under your feet. Do you understand? Look down."

"I'll fall," the Girl mumbled, and Wyldon remembered how Elasabenne had whispered the same thing once he had wheedled her into turning away from the view off Cavall's ramparts.

Annoyed, Wyldon wondered how two such strong people could be unmanned by something as stupid as heights. The answer, of course, was that they were women, and women couldn't be unmanned. Well, if they couldn't be unmanned by heights, perhaps they could be unwomanned by them. No, that was nonsense, because not only was unwomanned not a word, but women were supposed to be delicate. Really, when it came down to it, heights womanned, rather than unwomanned, Elasabenne and the probationer, and no matter how much the Girl might act like a boy, she was still a female prone to panicking under pressure.

"You can't," he snarled at the Girl, furious that he had been reduced to inventing words like unwomanned thanks to her. "You're on solid ground. Just look. Curse it, girl, do as you're told!"

Reflexively responding to the menace in his tone, the probationer stared down at the gray stones beneath them, as a wit among the pages squeaked in a falsetto voice, "Ooh, I'll _fall_."

Hearing the snickers from those closest to the page who had spoken, Wyldon knew that the probationer would be mocked mercilessly for her fear of heights. That fact didn't surprise him. After all, he was well aware of all the bullying that went on in the pages' wing. He recognized that he ripped into the boys, and then they ripped into each other. Although he punished anyone caught fighting, he didn't really mind the hazing, since not only was it traditional, but it taught lads to be strong, which would serve them well as knights.

Therefore, he was shocked to discover that, this time, he wanted to reduce the teasing that the Girl had to endure. Maybe her reminding him of Elasabenne had driven home to him the fact that the probationer was a sister and a daughter, too. Perhaps seeing her weaken had made him realize that if he couldn't bring himself to act fairly toward her, he could compensate for that by treating her like a lady once and protecting her. After all, if she was never going to be a knight, there was no need to put much effort into making her any stronger than she already was.

"All of you, back to the practice courts," he shouted, releasing the Girl and doing possibly the only charitable deed he would ever do for her by distracting the boys and giving her time to turn to her circle of friends for some confidence boosting. "We've time for a few rounds of staff work."


End file.
